Red Ascendent Painting

Trained at The Art Students League of New York Work included in the permanent print collection at The California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Currently - late 2012 - I am working on a series of images of dancers rehearsing. These originated from time spent at a dance studio where I drew the dancers during their rehearsals. Throughout my artwork in drawing, painting, wood relief carving, glass, and metal, I strive to articulate the dynamic interplay of forces that ebb and flow between energy and resistance. A reverence for nature and a fascination with pattern are both central to my work, which increasingly I am exploring vis-à-vis architectural applications and public sculpture. My interest in these themes stems from a longstanding interest in the links between art, technology, nature, and metaphysics. When I was a child, my great uncle, Robert Johns, exposed me to fine art as well as natural history, toting me along to the De Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences. As a young man I raced sailboats. Later in life I took up extreme kayaking. These diverse activities share a common thread with my fine-art practice across various media: a visceral and conceptual involvement with the mysteries of nature via physical, mechanical, and technological interfaces. As an art student in the late 1960s and early 1970s I pursued these ambitions by moving to Manhattan and studying at The Art Students League of New York. One of my teachers, Robert Beverly Hale, then a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gave me a pass to the private areas of the museum and arranged for me to copy Old Master Drawings, validating the lessons in draftsmanship presented in his lectures. This training in the fundamentals of artistic expression served me well when I returned to California and became increasingly attuned to the exquisite changes that occur as natural phenomena progress from one state to another. As an artist, my goal is to inhabit, concretize, and share these moments with viewers without labeling or limiting their content. I have approached these objectives in many modes. As a printmaker, I worked at Kala Institute in Berkeley, California, and Atelier North Star in Grafton, Vermont, helping realize the visions of clients including Pace Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art.